http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-moderate-democrats-should-be-running-on.html
"...But new survey data from the progressive think tank Data for Progress (DFP) demonstrates the very opposite. Now, when an ideologically motivated think tank puts out a poll showing that the public supports a policy it endorses, one should generally take its findings with a bucket of salt; in most cases, you’ll find that the survey was strategically worded to yield the desired result. But as DFP co-founder Sean McElwee explains in the Nation, the think tank took pains to preempt that criticism:
To explore the possibility of Democrats’ running on a guaranteed-job plan, we asked the respected data analytics firm Civis Analytics to not only poll guaranteed jobs, but poll it in the way that would be most likely to gain opposition from voters. They asked respondents: “Democrats in Congress are proposing a bill which would guarantee a job to every American adult, with the government providing jobs for people who can’t find employment in the private sector. This would be paid for by a 5 percent income tax increase on those making over $200,000 per year. Would you be for or against this policy?”
… The results of the Civis polling were nothing short of stunning, showing large net support for a job guarantee: 52 percent in support, 29 percent opposed, and the rest don’t know. “Even with explicit partisan framing and the inclusion of revenue in the wording, this is one of the most popular issues we’ve ever polled,” said David Shor, a senior data scientist at Civis Analytics."
This shouldn’t be surprising. Decades of political research has established that most voters view politics through the lens of identity, not ideology. Ordinary voters do not cast their ballots for whichever party or candidate most faithfully represents their abstract political philosophy, but rather, whichever one appears to best represent their people — a group they may define with reference to class, region, religion, gender, race, or partisanship itself.
Thus, when the typical “conservative” working-class voter hears a description of the federal jobs guarantee, she does not plot the proposal’s ideological valence on the left-right spatial model she keeps in her head (or ask herself what Friedrich Hayek would think); she merely hears a common-sense idea for giving work to the idle, and providing employment security to working-class people like herself.
And this is part of what makes the idea that Democrats must campaign as economic moderates in working class, pro-Trump districts so misguided. Reachable voters in such areas are almost invariably cross-pressured: Their racial or cultural identities pull them toward the GOP, while their class consciousness (however dim) makes them more sympathetic to “liberal” economic ideas. Such culturally conservative, fiscally progressive voters constitute a hefty chunk of the American electorate: A recent study of voter opinion by the political scientist Larry Bartels found that about one-fourth of Hillary Clinton’s supporters espoused downright Trumpian views on “cultural” issues, while still endorsing (and, ostensibly, prioritizing) conventionally liberal convictions about the role of government in the economy. Meanwhile, Bartels found that a majority of Republican voters approved of “government efforts to regulate pollution, provide a decent standard of living for people unable to work, and ensure access to good health care, while substantial minorities favor reducing income differences and helping families pay for child care and college.”
This study, along with multiple others, testifies to a basic truth about American politics, circa 2018: If Democrats could only get voters to cast their ballots on the basis of their views on economic policy, they would dominate all levels of government.
